Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Conquer <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Branch

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have exhausted creative self-imposed challenges that impose unique rules on a playthrough. Yet, although numerous players have attempted to complete the game with just a wooden stick, streamer the streamer holds the record as the player who endeavored to beat the adventure with a one stick—meaning, the exact same one throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such challenge runs, such as the time he went through the game solely with bombs or the attempt where he tried to beat the game with no stamina. A one-branch run, though, sounds impossible at first glance. There's the game's introduction, which requires the hero to use the Master Sword. Additionally, there's the whole durability mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the whole world. But if the stick shatters, that's the end. It's over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward answer is exploits. The complete story, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can manipulate Tears of the Kingdom's save file system to have separate playthroughs that affect one another. So PointCrow does a “preparation” save where he advances normally, and the actual file, where he's restricted. The preparatory file has him completing the prologue and first tutorial island, and this Link acquires full endurance and hearts. From here, he starts a cutscene and pauses partway through to tell the software to load an auto-save from the branch-only file. The system gets mixed up and creates a third save file that combines the states of the first two files.

This creates new issues, however. The merged file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to access sacred places. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch fixes readily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable version of the title that fails to load some areas. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the game midway through to ensure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Challenges

Interestingly, the prologue form of Link is programmed so that he is unable to damage any weapons he uses, presumably to prevent a situation where the user gets trapped at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how the streamer gets around the durability problem, as the Link he transfers between universes is the one from the beginning of the story. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eliminates all possible friction. The branch is still a ineffective weapon that renders battles onerous. But at that point, it's entirely a matter of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of consumables to improve his strength, or accumulate on revival fairies. He additionally employs a glitch that allows him to clip through the environment. A few would find these methods grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the run, but in my mind, he's a resourceful player who is ready to do whatever it takes to engage his viewer. He further implements a safeguard of kinds stating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban a viewer from his live stream, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat several of Tears of the Kingdom's main enemies, but the fights look painful. The YouTube edit of his journey spares the audience endure the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take multiple long hours. One boss fight, Queen Gibdo, requires an incredible twenty-three hours. The final villain battle, which erases Link's hearts as it progresses, is a memorable tense moment. The unbreakable branch is still only a stick. He can't necessarily duplicate objects midway the battle.

So, is it possible? Technically, he does defeat the beast form of Ganon. But the game forces the player to wield the legendary weapon as the last attack, so technically, it's not fully a branch-exclusive run. But what fun is that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed over a thousand people in his Twitch chat. Rest in peace.